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Dear
True Artist Tales Readers:
The True
Artist Tales comic strip has run almost continuously
on a weekly basis for 10 years. It first appeared in an alternative
weekly newspaper called The Public News here in Houston.
In 1994, I first began to present the strip on the World Wide
Web, as well. In 1996, I was recruited to Houston's "major"
weekly paper, the Houston Press. Over the years, I have tried
without success to increase the number of papers in which the strip
would run: the reasons for this failure are numerous: my lack of
marketing skills and time, plus the provocative, personal, and oblique
nature of the strip itself. The economic return for creating this
strip, for making that deadline every week for an entire decade
has been negligible (never more than $2000 per year at best). I
have always made my living by other means (currently as a web designer
& illustrator).
What made me continue to pump out the strip?
Mostly I was compelled to do it, like any real artist. Also,
I simply enjoyed the effort, and almost always was extremely pleased
with the final product: each strip a new, fine artwork. Over the
last few years, however, the formal and cultural constraints of
the weekly strip format had begun to impinge upon the basic creative
desires that drive my work. Additionally, the sheer effort of getting
the strip out on a weekly basis had very much begun to burn me out.
Every week, my appointed session for completing the strip began
to something I anticipated with dread. I no longer felt free as
an artist... my work had become mere drudgery... even a type of
captivity.
And so, I have decided to change the format and schedule in and
with which True Artist Tales comix will appear.True Artist Tales
will no longer run on a regular schedule in any newspaper... although
I may be doing other cartooning work for Houston's local alternatives--
work specifically targeted at certain issues. My extended fictional
work, such as "A Hole In a Man", will be re-presented
on the Apeshot Website, carefully reformatted and edited with more
attention paid to the special formal properties and advantages of
the web (such as color, movement, even sound!). There will be no
set schedule for the appearance of such new work, but there will
be continuous updates as new work is produced. True
Artist Tales readers may take advantage of our new service, by signing
up to be PERSONALLY NOTIFIED via email when new updates have
been added to the Apeshot Website. Further: no features
currently available on the site will be removed-- the old format
archive of strips will remain in place.
This more stately
pace of presentation will afford me more time to put comix into
PRINT, as comic BOOKS and GRAPHIC NOVELS, rather than just weekly
newspaper strips. I plan to self-publish material over the next
couple of years, and will announce these publications loudly here
on the Apeshot Studios site. Collaborations with comix publishers
like Top Shelf Books, who plan to reprint my Mysterioso graphic
novella, will continue as well.
The changes in True Artist Tales will result in a superior artistic
experience for both you, the readers, and myself as a cartoonist.
As ever, I thank you for reading, and hope you will continue to
do so.
--Scott A. Gilbert
October 15, 2000
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